All Things Teleport

I am hoping to create a central thread for discussion of teleportation powers and themes. I actually stole the subject name, "All Things Teleport," from a topic in the CoH forums before they launched. It was a place to discuss what you would like for teleportation to be in the game, and provide ideas to the devs. I hope this can be that kind of thread, going forward. That being said, I'll kick it off with some of my thoughts. Feel free to agree, disagree, modify or add your own.

I loved teleportation in CoH, but it never quite lived up to what I wanted it to be. TP Friend/Foe were nice, the Teleportation travel power was definitely a fun way to travel, and TP Group was, for the most part, a waste of a power slot. Personally, I was hoping for something a bit more Nightcrawlerish. I wanted to be better able to use teleport to attack and escape. I wanted teleportation to be my main power not a little something I did on the side as a convenience.

The problem is that the travel pools in CoH, never had much in the way of offensive or defensive capabilities, mostly because they were a travel pool, not full blown power sets. As has been suggested in this thread, http://cityoftitans.com/forum/two-sides-transpotation-powers, perhaps we need to divorce travel powers from offensive/defensive powers, so that we can have the travel themed powers we want, but not over power a travel pool.

If we were to have a travel pool, I have no problems with duplicating what we had in CoH. No need to reinvent the wheel on that one.

What I would like to see for a main power set based on teleportation would be powers like the following, in no particular order.

- Teleportation Attack I - Single Target - a quick teleport to an enemies location, attacking him, and then teleporting back to your starting location. This could also have a secondary effect of a small defensive buff, since it is harder to hit a target that is not in the same place from moment to moment. (Since you will be in melee range, you can be hit by enemy melee attacks and a single tick from the targeted enemies PBAoE effects)

- Teleportation Attack II - Single Target - You bring a target to you momentarily, strike them, and then send them back to their previous location. This has a secondary effect of disorienting your target. Other team mates within melee range of the target will also be able to attack once the enemy has been teleported into range. (Since you will be in melee range, you, and any other team mates in range of the target can be hit by enemy melee attacks and a single tick from the targeted enemies PBAoE effects)

- Teleportation Attack III - Targeted AoE - a quick succession of teleports that allow you to strike up to three random opposing enemies within a short radius of the targeted foe. Every ten levels your character achieves will allow you to attack one more foe, up to a maximum of five foes. This could also have a secondary effect of a small defensive buff, since it is harder to hit a target that is not in the same place from moment to moment. (Since you will be in melee range, you can be hit by enemy melee attacks from the main target and a single tick from all of the attacked enemies PBAoE effects)

-Teleportation Crush - PBAoE - when you teleport away, you also teleport a pocket of air surrounding you, which creates a vacuum. As the surrounding air rushes in to fill the vacuum, it crushes any enemies within the vacuum. Secondary effects could be a smashing damage bonus for each enemy in range as they are all blown into the center of the vacuum and smash into each other. (If the character also has Teleportation Disorient, and they activate Teleport Crush in one group of enemies and teleport to another group, or the same group of enemies, the effects of Teleport Disorient will be applied to the group at the teleportation destination, but at half the normal strength.)

- Teleportation Disorient - PBAoE - When teleporting into a group of enemies, you push the surrounding air away from your body upon materialization, the force of this does a small amount of smashing damage, but the concussive force momentarily disorients the surrounding enemies, with a very small chance to also knock back some of the enemies. (If the character also has Teleportation Crush, and they activate Teleport Disorient in one group of enemies and teleport to another group, or the same group of enemies, the effects of Teleport Crush will be applied to the group at the teleportation origination point, but at half the normal strength.)

- Wormhole - Ranged Teleport, Disorient - Basically the same power as the Gravity Control power of the same name in CoH.

- Back Track - Self Teleport, (could also be a Team Teleport) - This gives the character the ability to blindly teleport away from a battle to a random, previously explored part of the map. In a mission, it can be used to retreat from a battle that is going badly. If there are enemies that have not been cleared out, or roaming mobs, it is possible to encounter them when arriving at the destination point. The power will not teleport you to unexplored parts of the map. This power also has an extremely long recharge. (If the character also has Teleportation Crush, and they activate Back Track, the effects of Teleport Crush will be applied to the enemy group at the teleportation origination point, but at one quarter the normal strength.)

- Object Drop - Ranged Single Target - You use your teleportation abilities to drop random objects from the environment on your enemy. This produces high amounts of smashing damage.

- Momentum Attack - Single Target - You repeatedly and rapidly teleport yourself to fall from the ceiling, and teleport away before hitting the ground to build up enough momentum so that when you finally teleport above an enemy you impact them with more force than you would if you just teleported above them and fell normally. This will cause extreme damage to the target and moderate damage to you.

- Momentum Attack - Single Target - You repeatedly and rapidly teleport yourself to fall from the ceiling, and teleport away before hitting the ground to build up enough momentum so that when you finally teleport above an enemy you impact them with more force than you would if you just teleported above them and fell normally. This will cause extreme damage to the target and moderate damage to you.

Someone's been playing Portal!

I like these ideas. Clever applications of teleport to combat situations.

Whatever is done, please don't turn this into simply a map relocater, as it is in some other games. I loved the short-range travel ability. Makes me think of the time someone on the Help channel was stuck in a mish where a bug prevented characters from walking to a glowie. I was able to help him get past the bug via Teleport powers. Ah...good times...

- Teleportation Attack I - Single Target - a quick teleport to an enemies location, attacking him, and then teleporting back to your starting location. This could also have a secondary effect of a small defensive buff, since it is harder to hit a target that is not in the same place from moment to moment. (Since you will be in melee range, you can be hit by enemy melee attacks and a single tick from the targeted enemies PBAoE effects)

An easier way to think of this would be as a "Teleport Self Brawl" or some other kind of "Ranged Brawl" sort of attack, because in a lot of ways that's functionally what it is.

Michiel wrote:

- Teleportation Attack II - Single Target - You bring a target to you momentarily, strike them, and then send them back to their previous location. This has a secondary effect of disorienting your target. Other team mates within melee range of the target will also be able to attack once the enemy has been teleported into range. (Since you will be in melee range, you, and any other team mates in range of the target can be hit by enemy melee attacks and a single tick from the targeted enemies PBAoE effects)

Essentially a "Teleport Foe Brawl" that is still a Ranged Brawl, but one that moves Them To You rather than moving You To Them in order to land the hit.

Michiel wrote:

- Teleportation Attack III - Targeted AoE - a quick succession of teleports that allow you to strike up to three random opposing enemies within a short radius of the targeted foe. Every ten levels your character achieves will allow you to attack one more foe, up to a maximum of five foes. This could also have a secondary effect of a small defensive buff, since it is harder to hit a target that is not in the same place from moment to moment. (Since you will be in melee range, you can be hit by enemy melee attacks from the main target and a single tick from all of the attacked enemies PBAoE effects)

There are two ways to do this, although I figure the more interesting one would be as a cued Teleport To Location where you have to specify the Location(s) you're going to be Teleporting to, and then have your character "blink through" those locations in rapid succession in the order you specified. So when you Click the power, you're given a UI element telling you that if you Click Again right now, you'll strike "This Area" in the environment. Could be a transparent glowing bubble to give you a good idea of the spherical coverage of the power's AoE radius if placing your location "THERE" (if you follow me). Like City of Heroes this would require placing these Target Location clicks onto either an Obstructing Surface or else they will happen at Max Range for the Power, just like so many Target Location powers did for City of Heroes (such as Disruption Arrow in the Trick Arrow powerset).

Michiel wrote:

-Teleportation Crush - PBAoE - when you teleport away, you also teleport a pocket of air surrounding you, which creates a vacuum. As the surrounding air rushes in to fill the vacuum, it crushes any enemies within the vacuum. Secondary effects could be a smashing damage bonus for each enemy in range as they are all blown into the center of the vacuum and smash into each other. (If the character also has Teleportation Disorient, and they activate Teleport Crush in one group of enemies and teleport to another group, or the same group of enemies, the effects of Teleport Disorient will be applied to the group at the teleportation destination, but at half the normal strength.)

So instead of Teleporting away and leaving a "bomb" behind of some sort that will EXPLODE ... instead you Teleport away and leave behind a *vacumm bubble* that then proceeds to IMPLODE. Interesting distinction, but bear in mind that this particular formulation requires some sort of fluid medium (ie. air or water) for it to make sense. Wouldn't make a whole lot of sense in an environment that already features a vacuum as the natural state (such as outside a space station or on the surface of the moon, for example).

Michiel wrote:

- Wormhole - Ranged Teleport, Disorient - Basically the same power as the Gravity Control power of the same name in CoH.

Add in my notion of using a Target Self keybind toggle (which I've posted elsewhere in these forums) allowing the Player to decide whether or not they want this Wormhole to do Knockback (or not) when cast, and you're golden!

Michiel wrote:

- Back Track - Self Teleport, (could also be a Team Teleport) - This gives the character the ability to blindly teleport away from a battle to a random, previously explored part of the map. In a mission, it can be used to retreat from a battle that is going badly. If there are enemies that have not been cleared out, or roaming mobs, it is possible to encounter them when arriving at the destination point. The power will not teleport you to unexplored parts of the map. This power also has an extremely long recharge. (If the character also has Teleportation Crush, and they activate Back Track, the effects of Teleport Crush will be applied to the enemy group at the teleportation origination point, but at one quarter the normal strength.)

Random location? No, that just gets messy to program and produces unintended (and therefore unwanted) behaviors in actual gameplay because the Player is not in control of what the Power "does" when it is used. No ... far better to simply make this a "two stage Click" Power, or alternatively, do it as a Toggle that would effectively function like a "two stage Click" in terms of User Control.

The first Click of the Power sets the Recall Point the Power will return the Caster to. The location set is the Caster's current coordinates on the map at the time that this is done. This means that rather than dealing with any sort of "random" Teleporting around like you described, instead you can only Teleport "back to" some place that you have already been, and took the time to "set" this Power while you were there.

The second Click of the Power activates the Recall and Teleports the Caster to the Recall Point.

Unfortunately, this kind of structure creates a relatively "committed" way to use the Power, such that if you want to erase and replace the Recall Point, you can only do so by actually USING the Power to do so. You'd need to have some other kind of UI element involved in order to "overwrite" an already emplaced Recall Point without actually "using" it in order to "erase and replace" the Recall Point previously specified. One way I can think of to do so would be to use the Tap vs Hold UI Control system I've discussed elsewhere on these forums as a way to include the necessary "nuances" of User Control that this sort of thing would necessitate, without turning it into a plethora of buttons to click that would take up a lot of space in the Powers Trays.

So with respect to the formulation of this Power, if using what amounts to a sort of Charge mechanic, where you Hold down the keybind for a few seconds to produce different outcomes, what you could do is this. You'd set this up as a Charge game mechanic, but the "low end" of the Charge spectrum (ie. the Tap) would actually be the Teleport to Recall Point use of the Power, because that's the "quick response" end of the Charge game mechanic. However, if you let the Charge build up to "full" charge, at THAT point when you release the button the Recall Point would be (re)set to be the character's Current Location Coordinates. This would mean that you could Teleport BACK TO your Recall Point almost "instantly" ... but actually SETTING your Recall Point would require a few seconds of "concentration" (ie. casting time filling up the Charge progress bar) to complete, like say ... 4-5 seconds or so (ie. NOT instant). That way you have only a single Keybind doing the work of multiple UI command "options" and the separation between them is "sufficient" so as to keep false positives of "commands confusion" to a minimum. It would be a relatively simple mechanic for its users to learn, and it would function adequately well as an "escape move" to flee back to a point where you had already been previously, completely sidestepping any issues that come with Teleporting around "randomly" ...

Michiel wrote:

- Momentum Attack - Single Target - You repeatedly and rapidly teleport yourself to fall from the ceiling, and teleport away before hitting the ground to build up enough momentum so that when you finally teleport above an enemy you impact them with more force than you would if you just teleported above them and fell normally. This will cause extreme damage to the target and moderate damage to you.

That kind of thing may work against the minions of GLaDOS at Aperture Labs, but I'm thinking that it would just "take too long" to animate to be practical either in City of Heroes (historically) or in City of Titans in the future. It also runs the risks of "low bridge!" kinds of problems where there just isn't sufficient clearance in the environment to pull off this kind of maneuver, making it a Situational Attack at best. Not recommended.

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Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

On the first couple of powers, Teleportation Attack I and Teleportation Attack II, you described them as a ranged brawl. It is difficult to say if these attacks are ranged or melee. Yes you are striking from a distance, but you have to get up close to make the actual attack. In CoH terms, I am not sure if this would be a power set for a ranged scrapper or a melee blaster, either way it would be different than other power sets. Overall, I would classify it as melee since you are getting next to the target, and while there, subject to any aura/AoE effects they are running, and they also have a chance to hit you, if they have you targeted. In a sense it is a set of kiting powers.

I liked your thoughts on Teleportation Attack III. I was envisioning at as having a single enemy targeted, and then it also hits 2-4 other enemies within a certain radius. I do like your idea of targeting an area and then it just hits several enemies in that area. Both ways would work. You idea is more of an active power for the player to control, whereas my idea was more passive and easier to just button mash in your attack chain. Overall, I like your idea better, because I think the fun of a teleportation set would be targeting and choosing where you go. I think some powers should be just a button click that fires on your selected target, like any other attack. The Teleportation Attack I and II would be these kinds of powers.

In regards to your comments on Teleportation Crush needing a fluid medium like air or water to work, I agree, but assuming this game ends up being almost exactly like CoH, then there never will be a space map to worry about the power not working. Also it would depend on if the devs make powers subject to the rules of their environments. It was always weird to see flame powers burning in the water in CoH, and it would be impossible to have flame in a vacuum. So, overall, I do not think it is a large concern, but could be fun if they implemented environmental effects/limitations on powers. If they do, then I do not feel that negates these being good powers to include in the game, it just makes them powers that do not work in some situations, but it would hardly be alone in that regard.

The Back Track power could be problematic, but I think they are problems that could be solved. You have a good idea with the click vs hold of the button to set a location and then teleport to it. I was initially thinking random points because it is an emergency escape type of power so you don't get to think about where you go. But I agree it could put you in weird corners. Perhaps it should just TP you to the beginning of the mission, or perhaps the devs can add invisible points on the mission map that you could teleport to, and it will randomly choose one of those. The idea of preprogrammed way points would be useful in open areas when you are not in a mission, and they take you to places like the hospital, a statue, a rooftop, a bus station, etc.

Finally, I agree the Momentum Attack is a weird one, and not necessarily the best for implementation, but I was throwing out all the ideas I could. In theory it works very well for a teleporting power set. In regards to length of animation, I think it doesn't have to take too long, but that long animation/build up time is part of the cost for having extreme damage on a foe. Similar to sniper attacks in CoH, they took a moment to fire, but when they did, the pay off was worth it. You could even make this an interruptible power. But it doesn't have to take too long, again this is essentially a fantasy game, so you could pick up speed faster than you would in the real world, and could even explain it away by saying that in the other dimension that you teleport through is speeding you up. I agree about the "low bridge" clearance issue for building momentum, but again this is a game and reality doesn't always come into play. Remember in CoH when mercenaries would parachute into offices and caves, fire under water and other odd things? There is a certain amount that we just accept the weirdness and move on. But if someone comes up with a better solution, I'm all for making things more realistic, not less.

- Redirect - Shield/Aura - When redirect is powered on, it will take incoming attacks and redirect them back at the attacker through a temporary wormhole. This works with ranged and melee attacks This power uses a high amount of endurance, and has a long recharge time. It is still possible for an attacker to hit you, but the chance to hit is greatly reduced.

- Dimensional Rift - Teleportation/phase/fear/disorient - This power will allow you to briefly teleport an enemy or group of enemies to another dimension. They will be gone for a short period of time and can not be targeted or damaged. When they return they will have a short duration where they are subject to a fear and a disorient effect. This is another power that would have a high endurance cost and high recharge.

Teleportation Attack I and II bother me a bit because they beg a lot of questions. First, "common sense" would imply that these actions are burning twice the power of a teleport self or teleport foe, since you're basically doing it twice in quick succession. Then you have to wonder what things would be countermeasures to these. For example, a resistance to knock back/knockdown would seem like it should apply to being involuntarily yanked through hyperspace, or at least that it would be more difficult than average. And like you mention, what other players do is important, too: if you teleport quickly to your target, would you set off traps within range of your target? Vice versa for your opponent being teleported to you; would it degrade to a single teleport foe if they get rooted at your end?

Teleportation Attack III sounds like it would be difficult for the player to set up in combat. It would be an interesting power to use with a ninja concept, though.

Teleportation Crush: If you create a vacuum at your departure location, you should create a 2X overpressure at your destination, too. At the least, an outward knockback. (Personally, I've preferred the conceptualization of teleportation as swapping the contents of two subspaces; it makes the math work out a bit better, though you still get some discontinuities at the bounds.)

Object Drop: Would this be like COH's Gravity Control: Propel, where the object is some random thing picked from the database, or would you need to find an actual thing to move? (The latter, of course, means that the devs would need to take movable objects on the map into account of play balance.) But something like this definitely would need to be in any offensive teleport set. Also, you need to answer the question: could things be teleported into a target?

Momentum Attack kind of blurs the line between offensive and travel power. I think there could be several powers in this model that combine teleportation with various martial arts attacks.

Come to think of it, could a teleporter simply teleport their target upside down a few feet over where they were, so they fall on their head?

When it comes to combat teleportation, I'll admit I'm partial to the stunts Kuroko pulls off in the _A Certain Scientific Railgun_ series. She combines teleportation with basic martial arts and a stash of metal spikes to take on more overtly powerful opponents, and she can use her powers to disable weapons and equipment and do root and hold effects. And that's with the limitation that she can teleport only herself and things she is in contact with, and only to places she's been recently (similar to Back Track) or can see clearly.

When it comes to combat teleportation, I'll admit I'm partial to the stunts Kuroko pulls off in the _A Certain Scientific Railgun_ series. She combines teleportation with basic martial arts and a stash of metal spikes to take on more overtly powerful opponents, and she can use her powers to disable weapons and equipment and do root and hold effects. And that's with the limitation that she can teleport only herself and things she is in contact with, and only to places she's been recently (similar to Back Track) or can see clearly.

Kuroko using Teleportation against Bank Robbers in a way that looks like it would be entirely appropriate for any Hero Bank Robbery Mission in City of Heroes.

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Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

In regards to the Teleport Attack I and II, They might be more expensive than a normal melee attack, but not because of the teleportation but to balance out the defense buff. The way I see it, is that since your whole power set revolves around teleporting, the endurance cost of teleporting would be lower than it is for the travel powers. I'm looking at this as a primary or secondary type power set. Being that it is a game, there are certain things that are done for balance, so it wouldn't eat the same amount of energy as using fire, creating ice, or shooting an assault rifle. But those are just balance issues. If it is to powerful, then obviously it would need a higher endurance cost or longer recharge time.

I do think that there should be some resistance to being teleported like with Teleport Attack II, but then again, maybe there shouldn't be a power to bring them to you. But, if you think about using powers in combination, you could use the Attack II to bring them to you, then you can use Teleportation Disorient, to leave him stunned while you go take care of another target with Attack I. I think you can combine the various powers to create a synergy, and also have the feel of bouncing around and handling multiple targets.

Teleportation Attack III to, doesn't seem difficult. I picture it as working like any power. You have an enemy targeted, then you teleport to them and have an attack. If there are other enemies near them, you will also see brief animations of you punching or kicking them as well in rapid succession. In short you pick one target and any that are in range of him will also be attacked.

I agree, that with the Teleportation Crush there would be extra force at your destination, which is what gave me the idea of Teleportation Disorient. But you could just say that you left the extra air in the other dimension for the Crush power, and that you brought extra air with you for the Disorient one. There are ways to cheat the explanations. Again, there is reality and there is game reality, and they don't always match up. In short you are using hammer space, the same way an Assault Rifle Blaster pulled his gun from and Stone Tanks pulled their hammers from.

Yes, Object Drop would be like Propel. It is up to the devs to decide if they want random objects, random objects from the environment or to make you click something to drop.

I'm not sure why you think the Momentum Attack would be any more like a travel power than any of the other powers discussed. I am assuming there would be a range limit similar to a Blasters attack range.

You could have a power that drops an enemy on his head. It wouldn't be very flashy, but it could be done. Perhaps it would be a minor damage, but with a knockdown and disorient added to it.

One of my pet peeves with CoX was how the Fighting pool was pretty much useless. There were some corner cases where you could make it work, but by and large it was abandoned. And further, the basic attack everyone had (brawl) was also commonly relegated to the dust heap.

Contrast with Tabula Rasa, where every character was a soldier, and consequently everyone could use a rifle, and the rifle was quite good as a general-purpose attack. Thus the various classes could focus on providing the specialized stuff and didn't have to blow a couple powers on bread-and-butter attacks.

Teleport Attack I and II seem to be filling this bread-and-butter role, and seem to be pulling some "hey wait a second" things like I outlined before regarding traps and such if they were somehow immune to those things yet inexpensive as far as powers go. In short, I see what you're trying to get at regarding mechanics and usefulness to the player, but the power concepts aren't supporting it.

Anyway, that gets toward what Redlynne was talking about as "ranged brawl": it's a brawl, but inflicted on a target that's initially outside melee range.

As for "energy use" (which as you point out is a rather relative concept), I wasn't trying to relate it to any other power set. I was trying to relate it to the basic teleport power used to simply move oneself or a target. E.g. teleport to enemy, smack them, and teleport back seems like it should cost at least twice the energy/mana/whatever as simply teleporting to the enemy one-way. This seems to imply that teleportation itself should be relatively effortless (i.e. trivial energy cost, much lower than in CoX).

Simplifying Teleport Attack III to a targeted AoE takes care of player-control issues, but there's still the same "energy use" issue as before.

I think there's a lot of potential in the concept of using teleportation to create pressure gradients. Basically, a "propel air." You don't even have to go to the extent of creating an outright vacuum to achieve the desired effect.

Something like this could be used to implement a power effectively like Teleport Attack I: You punch to create an airflow, simultaneously using teleportation powers to focus and compress this flow and teleport it to the target. A smack from across the room, if you will. Maybe even like a Boot to the Head. Anyway, since this doesn't involve moving the entirety of yourself or your target, it would obviously not be as "energy" expensive as Teleport Self or Foe, solving that problem. It also solves the trap and friendly-action questions.

All this, of course, avoids another form of teleportation, namely, the ability to open dimensional gateways (wormholes or whatever), where you could just open a small portal between your fit and the target's face and just punch through it like the guy was next to you. That could be another power in this set, or the conceptual basis of another teleportation (dimensional?) combat power set...

Something like this could be used to implement a power effectively like Teleport Attack I: You punch to create an airflow, simultaneously using teleportation powers to focus and compress this flow and teleport it to the target. A smack from across the room, if you will. Maybe even like a Boot to the Head. Anyway, since this doesn't involve moving the entirety of yourself or your target, it would obviously not be as "energy" expensive as Teleport Self or Foe, solving that problem. It also solves the trap and friendly-action questions.

At that point you've basically just recreated the functionality of Force Bolt out of the Force Fields powerset, but given it one significant difference because the power is based on Teleportation ... Does Not Require Line Of Sight To Target. Everything else is just Force Bolt-ish at that point.

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Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

Well, as Larry Wall once said, there's more than one way to do it. Whether it's by "projecting force" through a path or teleporting a localized thunderclap into the target's noggin skipping over that annoying intervening distance, the game mechanics are similar and you've got your basic attack.

The part I'd like to hilight, though, is that by describing different "fluff" for the two versions, you lead to different directions for the other powers in the set. For example, an obvious upgrade for the force version is a cone AoE, while the obvious upgrade for the teleport version is a targeted AoE similar to Teleport Attack III above.

I meant to address what you had said about traps and things like that. The way I see it, is if you teleport over to an enemy to punch them, if he has a trip mine or a fiery aura or a fear aura active, you are susceptible to the effects of those powers. Conceivably you could teleport over to an enemy, make your punch but get put to sleep or held and unable to return to your starting position. So, no, I never meant to imply that using the teleport attacks would make you immune to these things. You may get a defense buff because you are quickly teleporting in and out, and that may help you avoid those effects, but then again it may not. This would be part of the risk of using these kinds of powers.

From a game mechanics point of view, I see it as your character actually teleporting to the other location, attacking and teleporting back to the original location, not just a graphic of you punching someone but your character, in the eyes of the computer, is still in the original location.

I think when it comes to energy use, we are just going to disagree. Although I can see an argument for making these powers use more endurance than a regular punch, I do not think they should use the same amount as two teleports and a punch. I think that it would be assumed that if this was your power, this is something that is easy for you to do, thus if an attack is essentially a punch, like a fiery punch, and icy punch, and energy punch, etc, then it shouldn't be any more expensive. Now there may be slightly more endurance expense, or maybe a slightly less damage inflicted, but for it to work as a balanced power set, the energy use can not be extremely different from other, comparable power sets. Even in CoH, some power sets were more expensive in endurance because of their damage, or strong secondary effects, or they were slightly more or less powerful. This is the balancing that the devs do to make a set work in the greater context of the game.

I kind of like your concept of teleporting a pressurized bubble of air, but that seems less teleporty and more blasty.

That being said, I really like your idea of wormholes and having your fists and feet go through them. It reminds me of the Spot from old Spiderman comics. It isn't quite a teleport, but could still fit in with the larger power set. But if you have a power like this, can an aura/aoe power used by the enemy travel back through your wormhole?

Perhaps there could be two power sets, a teleportation set and a wormhole set.

I think when it comes to energy use, we are just going to disagree. Although I can see an argument for making these powers use more endurance than a regular punch, I do not think they should use the same amount as two teleports and a punch.

In other words, you should be getting a free ride? That's not how this works, you know ... and that's not how you balance a game (or at least, it's not how you respect "Balance").

So even though what you're ACTUALLY DOING is a Teleport+Brawl+Teleport ... either of yourself to the target and back, or of the target to yourself and back ... you feel like you should only be having to "pay" for the Brawl part? Uh ... NO ...

Just about the only way you could rationally "excuse" having a lower "cost" for pulling off such a move would be to limit the Range of the power below whatever Range is used for the Travel Teleport. So if the Travel Teleport is 300 meters and this attack power has a range of only 50 meters, you'd wind up needing to pay for 1/3rd the Endurance Cost of a Travel Teleport (because you have a 50 meters movement used twice for the "There and Back Again" aspect) on top of paying for the price of actually executing the Brawl attack during the brief moment your target is within Melee Range.

So the Endurance Cost of using the power can be less than Travel Teleport (x2) plus Brawl ... but you aren't going to be getting the "double teleport" part of the attack power "for free" just because it's an attack power. There are ways to *mitigate* the price of the "double teleport" involved, by limiting the attack power in various ways (ie. stack on "disadvantages" for a rebate on cost) ... but it's not going to be either negligible or nothing.

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Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

TP stalker was nice for annoying & defeating targets, it was also a pain in the ass. SS & CJ was a much better build for the most part.

I remember a few instances of my TPing stalker being a lot of fun:
Liberty Server, a well known Ice/EM Blaster and a Kin AND Emp friend. My stalker with only (IIRC lvl 42 SOs earned from siren's call. No set bonuses.). BU, TP, AS, ET (before it's nerf :-( ) Sometimes I would TP the buffer/healers to me and defeat them. Oh man, hours and hours of gr8 fun.

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No matter where you go, there you are.
CoH since 2004.
Lots of people soloed the big enemies.
NO EXTRA GEAR FOR PVP!!!!

I still remember the first time I saw someone TP away from me. I did a cavern of transcendence and I thought I saw someone go POOF! We loaded into AP and I changed my camera to see where he would go POOF to and then it happened, POOF and I saw where he went. It was pretty friggn awesome!.

That being said, after using it for a while it was a drag. Even with binds to make it less tedious.

—

----------------------------------------
No matter where you go, there you are.
CoH since 2004.
Lots of people soloed the big enemies.
NO EXTRA GEAR FOR PVP!!!!

Well, first, I never expected to have the range of a travel teleport on an attack power. As I said earlier in the thread, this would have ranges similar to most blaster attacks. I also said that I can see them being more expensive than a similar attack, but not as expensive as Lin Chiao Feng suggested. These are not travel powers with travel ranges these are short teleports for combat purposes.

In short, if it is going to be a power set, you have to make the endurance costs manageable. I do not think that some discounting of the endurance expended is out of line. I also do not think that "you should only be having to pay for the Brawl part." The question is how much should it cost? It can still be an expensive set, but it can't be full price expensive.

Perhaps using the fraction of the full endurance cost based on the powers range is the way to go. Using your example, if a travel teleport is 300 meters, and the combat teleport has a range of 50 meters, why not just do the 50 meter cost, plus the cost of the brawl? That would provide a discount to make it manageable since you are not paying the full endurance cost for there and back, but you are still paying an added cost for the advantages this kind of attack provides.

As far as disadvantages to offset a lower endurance cost, if this were a blaster set, the fact that you are briefly in melee range and subject to any effects that the enemy is emanating in that range, could be the disadvantage. Since ranged classes in pretty much every game have lower defense and lower hit points, that might be the thing that makes it not cost the full endurance, or at least makes it reasonable to use.

If the set were able to be used by multiple classes, perhaps the costs go up and down accordingly. Again, a blaster would have serious disadvantages to keep popping into melee range for the majority of their attacks. But a scrapper can take the hits and resist the mezzes, so maybe they do pay a higher endurance cost, and/or lower effectiveness of secondary effects.

For the record, I would love to see a power set like this, and I want to work out the pros and cons and come up with a workable set of ideas for the devs to run with. So, please, if you have ways to fix any problems or ideas for new powers, add them in.

The wormhole's only about as big as your fist, so there wouldn't be much room for something to leak through. Auras at the target might well be ineffective because you aren't moving yourself all the way over there, just your fist for a fraction of a second. (This, of course, means any auras of yours don't travel to your target, either.)

Anyway, back in CoX travel teleport was about 100 yd. base and ranged attacks were about 60-80 yd. So you're expecting to move your character 2/3 the distance of a travel teleport and back for little to no energy use. I guarantee you that the response from the free-ride players will be "But travel TP costs too much! My punch moves me more than that and costs almost nothing!" and not the other way around. And there are plenty of ways to make my version sufficiently "teleporty" without making the teleporter the guy who can't fight up close as well as a melee class and can't use ranged powers because he'll just get mezzed way out of support range and draw aggro from other spawn groups around the target to boot.

In short, it's like putting these two options in front of the hero or villain and asking which they like better. The answer's going to be "I like the one that doesn't get my ass kicked."

If this attack costs, in total, much more than brawl but does damage like brawl, it's going to feel underpowered. That's why I was saying that it implies a really low cost for the teleportation part, because the total energy cost can't be much more than plain old brawl or the damage-to-energy ratio gets too low and players avoid it.

Anyway, that's why I feel that teleporting your whole body just to punch someone in the face is too much risk for too little reward.

First you would have to target an enemy, not just a random spot, and when you do use the power, you have just agreed an enemy.

Second and more important, how can you use it as a travel power if it is moving you to a target and back to your starting point? That is effectively NOT traveling anywhere. It is kind of hard to move through a zone or even a map when every teleport you make, you teleport back to the same spot. So your "free ride" argument is 100% invalid.

As far as the wormholes, it depends if this power set is considered melee or ranged. If it is melee, it would be unfair to not be subject to auras, or to have your auras not work. But if it is a ranged set, it wouldn't be fair to have yours, or the enemies auras travel though. So maybe we need to define whether the set is ranged or melee. Or if the set can be used for multiple classes, what changes from class to class?

First you would have to target an enemy, not just a random spot, and when you do use the power, you have just agreed an enemy.

Yep, got that.

Michiel wrote:

Second and more important, how can you use it as a travel power if it is moving you to a target and back to your starting point?

I'm not saying you are using it as a travel power. I'm saying that since the description involves moving the player from one point to another and back (and, as we discussed earlier, that movement isn't immune to AoE or trap effects at the target, which means as far as the game engine is concerned your character really did move to the target for a bit, long enough to check and resolve such things, and it's not just a fancy animation effect), you can compare it to character movement, and thus a travel power.

My car doesn't use far less gas per mile for a ten-minute quick trip to the store and back vs. a trip across town to watch a movie. I don't expend a trivial amount of effort to do a squat or ten as compared to the effort of putting the weights on the bar.

So, no, my "free ride" argument is valid as the end does not give you a refund on the means.

Michiel wrote:

As far as the wormholes, it depends if this power set is considered melee or ranged. If it is melee, it would be unfair to not be subject to auras, or to have your auras not work.

The amount of fairness is debatable, but I'd duck that whole debate by saying that this is effectively a ranged power that just looks like melee.

Michiel wrote:

But if it is a ranged set, it wouldn't be fair to have yours, or the enemies auras travel though.

Totally. Though I would only say that the power is ranged. The rest of the set could bias toward melee or ranged as needed. Much like a hypothetical Ninjutsu power set would be mostly melee but could still have a couple ranged shuriken powers.

I'd start out creating a whole pool of powers, then taking a subset of those for ranged classes and a subset for melee classes. (The class discussions seem to mention "assault" classes as well, though I'm unclear on the meaning of the term here.)

OK, I was mistakingly thinking you thought people would use it as a travel power, so we may not be as far apart on this as our previous posts might indicate. I obviously do not feel that you should have the full endurance cost of the teleport there, the attack, and the trip back, as that would make this a useless set, because after two or three attacks you would have no endurance left.

To give an example of another power where endurance used is not necessarily matching the energy output of a set of powers in real life terms, I would like to discuss the old Assault Rifle set from CoH. If endurance is how much energy, you as a person are expending, then Assault Rifle should have been dirt cheap. It doesn't take much to fire a gun and reload, but it was as expensive as an electrical blast or a fire blast. In short it wasn't based on reality, but on game balance. It had to do as much damage as other similar power sets, but they couldn't be allowed to have endless firepower, so the devs made the endurance cost comparable to other sets, even though, logically, it should never cost as much as it did.

So, I think that although it might be a bit more expensive to use a teleportation attack, than a regular punch or a blast, it should not be the full price of two teleports and an attack as it would be prohibitively expensive. In short there has to be a middle ground.

OK, I was mistakingly thinking you thought people would use it as a travel power, so we may not be as far apart on this as our previous posts might indicate. I obviously do not feel that you should have the full endurance cost of the teleport there, the attack, and the trip back, as that would make this a useless set, because after two or three attacks you would have no endurance left.

Actually, you got me thinking if there was a way to abuse this into being a pseudo-travel power, by having someone (a 1v1 duelist?) grab you at the destination with something weak (web grenade?) that prevented you from getting back, and voila, "travel" with a non-travel power. Way too much work.

And that resultant high energy cost is why I was thinking that simply teleporting the shock wave, especially since you have other powers in the set that use this exact kind of "cause localized air pressure shocks by using teleportation" effect.

And also it would look cool for your character to punch at thin air over here, and then see the target recoil from an uppercut way over there almost immediately.

Michiel wrote:

To give an example of another power where endurance used is not necessarily matching the energy output of a set of powers in real life terms, I would like to discuss the old Assault Rifle set from CoH. If endurance is how much energy, you as a person are expending, then Assault Rifle should have been dirt cheap. It doesn't take much to fire a gun and reload, but it was as expensive as an electrical blast or a fire blast. In short it wasn't based on reality, but on game balance.

I'd argue that was less game balance than shoehorning it into the game mechanics they had. To do AR "right" they would need to have ammunition. And that kind of was the fudge they used: "Endurance" in that case represented how fast you could fire the thing including reload time. It was still rather unnatural, though, and nothing like Tabula Rasa's system, which was way more fun as far as gunplay mechanics go.

Michiel wrote:

So, I think that although it might be a bit more expensive to use a teleportation attack, than a regular punch or a blast, it should not be the full price of two teleports and an attack as it would be prohibitively expensive. In short there has to be a middle ground.

Which brings us back to your insistence that the entire player move in this attack. Twice. That just isn't needed. You're insisting on personally driving across town where a phone call or parcel post will do.

Getting back to power set designs, most power sets also start with simple attacks and progress to more complicated things. Teleporting yourself 50 yards and back like a yoyo seems like a much more complex proposition than teleporting an object onto someone's head or teleporting them upside down. In CoX terms I'd expect to see something like that be a higher level, assassin strike-type power, not the basic attack you'll be using all the time. And even then it would be one-way. (You'd use another power for "teleport me back to an anchor point" if desired.)

Further, this power would only be useful for ranged attacks. A Teleportation Melee set would look a lot more like a modified Martial Arts set.

And I'm not even getting into how disorienting it will be for the player to have the camera jumping back and forth on every attack, and what it does to the game engine and server traffic. Which is the kind of thing that gets the kibosh put on ideas like this.

Yes, I am envisioning teleporting to a target and back. I am envisioning this similar to Night Crawler and his combat style. But it doesn't have to be a there and back It could be one way, but that would just turn it into a straight up melee and lose the feel of teleporting in and out.

Although I like your ideas of punching through wormholes, that is a different type of power and would have a different feel in combat. It would be less Nightcrawler and more like Cloak or the Spot. Again I think they could be two whole, complimentary power sets. How awesome would it be to have a TP/Wormhole blapper?

As far as what powers you get first, I stated in my first post about the powers that they were in no particular order, and I can see dropping an object on someones head being one of the first powers. So the order is not set in stone, it was just the order I thought of them, and it can easily be changed.

I do envision this as a modified martial arts set. You teleport, you punch and teleport away. You teleport again, kick someone in the face, then teleport away. It would be very much like kiting an enemy.

As far as disorientation to the player, it doesn't have to be disorienting. Lets say you are standing in a doorway and see an enemy across the room, and fire off a teleportation attack. From the player view, I am thinking your camera stays at the original location in the doorway, and you see you character disappear from the doorway and reappear next to the the bad guy, punch him in his junk, and then reappear back in the doorway. Your view as the player never changes. Now from the server view, your character would actually move there and back. Now, maybe, as you suggested, that might be too much load on the server, perhaps for background mechanics, instead of moving the character twice, it never moves them, but it applies damage to the enemy as if you had, but also it applies any auras and other effects from the enemy to you. In short there is a swap of damage data, but not an actual movement of your character. I do not know if one way or the other is actually better from a coding standpoint and/or a server load standpoint, or maybe they are a wash, but that could be two ways to implement it and not be totally disorienting for the player.

Yes, I am envisioning teleporting to a target and back. I am envisioning this similar to Night Crawler and his combat style. But it doesn't have to be a there and back It could be one way, but that would just turn it into a straight up melee and lose the feel of teleporting in and out.

I'm really leery of "let's have something work like (character)'s power" because comic book characters get a lot of protection and balance of their own because that's the author's job. That mechanism really doesn't have an MMO counterpart beyond overall balance and game design rules, and something whose mechanics are that far outside everything else in the game will tend to get nerfed to uselessness or outright vetoed. Lots of other powers will have to have explicit "How does it work with TP Attack I" special rules.

To say nothing of the legal exposure.

Also, for the record, I have not read anything about Nightcrawler and I think I saw him (her?) in an X-Men movie, but it's fuzzy. But this trick doesn't seem like it's his (gah, assuming male, apologies if wrong) routine attack he's using every couple of seconds. It seems more like a mid-level power.

Michiel wrote:

Although I like your ideas of punching through wormholes, that is a different type of power and would have a different feel in combat. It would be less Nightcrawler and more like Cloak or the Spot. Again I think they could be two whole, complimentary power sets. How awesome would it be to have a TP/Wormhole blapper?

The wormhole stuff is different. It's either a different power set or a different "mechanism" that uses the same powerset because of similar mechanics. I think there's up to four powersets to be had here: Teleporter Melee, Teleporter Assault, Wormhole Melee, Wormhole Assault.

Again, this is starting to sound like "I wanna play Nightcrawler!"

Michiel wrote:

As far as what powers you get first, I stated in my first post about the powers that they were in no particular order, and I can see dropping an object on someones head being one of the first powers. So the order is not set in stone, it was just the order I thought of them, and it can easily be changed.

I'd kind of expect the "drop object on them" power to be somewhere around where Propel was in Gravity Control. Maybe a couple slots earlier due to the lack of other control powers.

Michiel wrote:

I do envision this as a modified martial arts set. You teleport, you punch and teleport away. You teleport again, kick someone in the face, then teleport away. It would be very much like kiting an enemy.

And you're insisting the entire hero teleport, and I see that as completely unnecessary, and we're just not going to agree on this, are we...

Michiel wrote:

As far as disorientation to the player, it doesn't have to be disorienting. Lets say you are standing in a doorway and see an enemy across the room, and fire off a teleportation attack. From the player view, I am thinking your camera stays at the original location in the doorway, and you see you character disappear from the doorway and reappear next to the the bad guy, punch him in his junk, and then reappear back in the doorway.

What you just described is an animation. All that is what you see, however your character model (i.e. where the game thinks you are) never leaves your starting point. And your character is never "really" at the target. How do I know this? Because...

Michiel wrote:

Your view as the player never changes.

Exactly. The camera is tied to where you really are. So then...

Michiel wrote:

Now from the server view, your character would actually move there and back.

So the client coders have to support a mechanic where the player moves and the camera doesn't. I have no idea if the engine supports such a thing; every Unreal engine game I've played didn't do this outside of cutscenes.

All for a fancy brawl. Because you're just punching him in the face.

Michiel wrote:

Now, maybe, as you suggested, that might be too much load on the server, perhaps for background mechanics, instead of moving the character twice, it never moves them, but it applies damage to the enemy as if you had, but also it applies any auras and other effects from the enemy to you. In short there is a swap of damage data, but not an actual movement of your character.

So basically all the real work is now dumped on the server side (warning: lag sensitivity here).

So far we're ignoring what happens if you get rooted or mezzed at the destination (or worse, one-shotted by something you never see) and how long the camera is supposed to hang back at the starting point before moving to your new (involuntary) address.

Michiel wrote:

I do not know if one way or the other is actually better from a coding standpoint and/or a server load standpoint, or maybe they are a wash, but that could be two ways to implement it and not be totally disorienting for the player.

Honestly, at this point it's the coders I'm worried about disorienting. This is a lot of brand-new code that I doubt will be of much use to other powers, much less powersets.

You said that it sounds like this could be four power sets, Teleporter Melee, Teleporter Assault, Wormhole Melee, Wormhole Assault. AWESOME! What can we do to work this out and make it happen? Putting mechanics and balance aside, does this sound like something you and others would want to play. If so, then we can work on the mechanics and balance. and present the devs with some reasonably fleshed out power set ideas.

By the way, this isn't an I want to play Nightcrawler thing, but he is the best example of this type of power set. I started this thread in response to another thread that was talking about travel power themed power sets. This is what came up with for teleport. (I wouldn't mind working on a similar Super Speed set and a Flying set). Now if it is technically to much for the devs, the servers, the client or whatever, that is fine, not everything can be implemented, there are limits. Instead, lets try to find a way to make it work? Lets find the loopholes and workarounds.

I have explained the intended look and feel, so what are ways to implement it? Do you actually move the character, or do you cheat and have an animation of your character moving. I'm not a programmer. So I do not know what is too much to do or not. They are looking for suggestions and I am trying to give them, and when presented with possible problems, I am trying to come up with possible solutions.

So, now that you know what I am talking about, how do you think it could be implemented? What are ways around the problems you present?

You do make a good point about what happens if you get mezzed or killed in the middle of the attack, and what the camera does. Again I have no clue what is easier to do, if it is practical, or if there are other ways of doing it, but I would think that either, a) the camera is "pulled" to the new location, or b) the attack cycle finishes with both teleports, but you arrived mezzed, held or dead. Off hand I would think the second solution would be easiest, that way you don't have to code for the camera being moved. This often happened in CoH, when you fired off an attack, and immediately got mezzed or killed, it would finish the attack animation and then just show the animation for your new state. So, in that sense, if the teleport attack is just an animation, then nothing new would be need to be coded.

Now the animation might be more complicated. As it would have to show your character, whether they are large or small, instead of just showing a bunch of icicles or a fireball hitting someone. It would be more complicated than changing the color of the icicles or fireballs. But I'm not a programmer, maybe it wouldn't take much more work.

You said that it sounds like this could be four power sets, Teleporter Melee, Teleporter Assault, Wormhole Melee, Wormhole Assault. AWESOME! What can we do to work this out and make it happen?

Whoa! Slow down, man. I'm not a dev, and I said that assuming you'd be more accepting of alterations. Another assumption is that there'd be a bunch more work into filling out the rest of the powers. I still have no idea what the devs mean when they use the word "Assault"; I'm guessing a ranged/melee 50/50 or so mix. Heck, a defensive secondary could be made out of a few of the powers, such as a return-to-anchor teleport, or using teleportation (of self or incoming attack, it depends) as a means of defense.

Redlynne linked to a video of Kuroko beating down some bank robbers; that's the kind of thing I would want to do with a teleportation/martial arts hybrid "Teleporter Melee" set. Note that she does not use any air compression effects (which are kind of dubious) but instead has several martial arts and melee weapon style moves that are augmented by teleportation. It's very much working without any teleport-away stuff.

Michiel wrote:

Putting mechanics and balance aside, does this sound like something you and others would want to play. If so, then we can work on the mechanics and balance. and present the devs with some reasonably fleshed out power set ideas.

But that's just it. The power set more or less is the mechanics, and the less the mechanics deviate from the tech they have, the better.

Michiel wrote:

So, now that you know what I am talking about, how do you think it could be implemented? What are ways around the problems you present?

You know, that's pretty much what I covered in these replies... >_<

Michiel wrote:

Now the animation might be more complicated. As it would have to show your character, whether they are large or small, instead of just showing a bunch of icicles or a fireball hitting someone. It would be more complicated than changing the color of the icicles or fireballs. But I'm not a programmer, maybe it wouldn't take much more work.

I am a programmer, and I wouldn't make that bet.

Anyway, I'm not really comfortable discussing implementation issues any further without seeing the code, and once I do that I couldn't talk about it anyway, so we're kinda stuck there.

I know you are not a dev, and neither am I. That is why it I am brainstorming ideas. This is not the point to shoot anything down. I fully understand that these are raw ideas that need tweaking, alteration and quite possibly some or all of it is not something that can or should be done. I understand the power is the mechanics, but you don't start with mechanics and make the power, you start with the idea of the power and build the mechanics to make it happen, or see if the idea fits the existing mechanics. Like you said, we have not seen the code, so at this point lets worry less about the mechanics, and come up with the ideas. If the ideas are there, then maybe the mechanics get included. Now is the time to say what we would like to see. Let the devs decide what they want to tackle and what is or is not possible.

As far as Redlynnes video, I think it has a lot of potential. The very first thing Kuroko does is exactly what I am envisioning, which is teleporting over to a person, kicking them in the head and teleporting away. A teleportation/martial arts set of powers. I also tried to add in some other variety that keeps with the theme of teleportation, like dropping objects on peoples heads, and even tried to think outside of the box with things like creating vacuums by teleporting yourself and the surrounding air away. We probably should add in some other teleporting items type of attacks.

So, I am not saying don't bring up problems, but for the moment, lets focus and brainstorm on what we would like to see in a teleportation set and in a wormhole set, because the more ideas we have, the more likely we can build working power sets.

Visual decoupling means that quite a few of these possibilities are (or at least could be) simply another form of ranged attack in a normal set. Damage done at range which happens to be of a type a fist might do? Okay, next question, is that fist on fire? Is it "slicing air" in an anime style attack? Etc.

Yes, this does mean that it would act as a ranged power in those cases (and, for example, be subject to LOS restrictions as appropriate), and no, it does not cover everything involved here. But fundamentally, most powers are going to be built based on net effect: who is affected, how they are affected, how *long* they are affected, and so on. The further something strays from being able to be built from a 'straightforward' model of this form, the more likely it is to be a long while in coming, simply due to the fact that it increases the complexities of the mechanics.

To be clear: that does not mean that the complexities are bad ideas or would not be implemented at some point (or that the would), it simply means that in practical terms, the more "extra" stuff required to make a set work, the more investment of time and energy it will take to make it balanced and integrate it with everything else, and thus the longer it will *probably* be before it shows up, if it happens at all.

A simple thought to drop in the cauldron:
Visual decoupling means that quite a few of these possibilities are (or at least could be) simply another form of ranged attack in a normal set. Damage done at range which happens to be of a type a fist might do? Okay, next question, is that fist on fire? Is it "slicing air" in an anime style attack? Etc.

In retrospect, some of that was about as clear as mud. So let me try again:

Cases 1 and 2 of the original, if discarding the complex mechanics questions of "does X actually *move*" (in a gameplay-affecting way) are basically both just visual variations of any other ranged line-of-sight / "beam" (as opposed to "projectile") attack. They don't happen to have any animation of the middle section, just of the attack happening and of the impact animation.

The fact that there may happen to be an entire body involved in the animation is, for the most part, not actually likely to be a big issue -- if anything it is probably simpler than managing to correctly 'aim' a normal melee attack.

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
A simple thought to drop in the cauldron:
Visual decoupling means that quite a few of these possibilities are (or at least could be) simply another form of ranged attack in a normal set. Damage done at range which happens to be of a type a fist might do? Okay, next question, is that fist on fire? Is it "slicing air" in an anime style attack? Etc.

In retrospect, some of that was about as clear as mud. So let me try again:
Cases 1 and 2 of the original, if discarding the complex mechanics questions of "does X actually *move*" (in a gameplay-affecting way) are basically both just visual variations of any other ranged line-of-sight / "beam" (as opposed to "projectile") attack. They don't happen to have any animation of the middle section, just of the attack happening and of the impact animation.
The fact that there may happen to be an entire body involved in the animation is, for the most part, not actually likely to be a big issue -- if anything it is probably simpler than managing to correctly 'aim' a normal melee attack.

Is anyone else giggling insanely at the mental image of a hero that punches so hard it causes small tears in spacetime that happen to make said punches connect with an enemy? Arm extends, vanishes into thin air at the elbow, fist and forearm appear in midair near target and punch. Commence laughter. Easy problem would be a heavy single target focus in the set with maybe one of two AoE attacks performed by dropping a grenade instead of just punching.

Yep.... I really feel like we all need a lesson on how best to structure our ideas to be useful for the team.... many of my ideas, ive come to realize, really arexjust aesthetic changes......
Any chance we could convince a dev type to throw out a bone as to what sort of damage types are already in the pepper mill..... and sexondary effects, too, if that's a seperate list....

Probably, but in fairness, several of the folks working on the power stuff are chewing on exactly that set of stuff themselves. Honestly, probably the best approach would be to re-read the couple of "customization" and "how we intend to build power sets" posts in this sort of light.

As for damage types and secondary effects, this is neither a promise that things will appear, or that they won't, but you could certainly do worse than assuming something roughly in line with what our spiritual ancestor had. There almost certainly *will* be changes from that, but half the trick is that even damage types and effect types aren't really what they might seem on the surface.

As an example, "ice" in CoX was a damage type, sure, but the better way to think about it for this purpose would be "a damage type of some arbitrary name which happened to oppose an arbitrarily-named 'fire' type, and was generally associated with secondary effects that either reduced movement or reduced the speed at which attacks renewed" (Slow, -Rech)

A rose by the name '0x5206AD24' still has scent '0x34'...

Also, for the record, even the 'just re-visualized' stuff is useful. Our artists and animators need plenty of fodder to work from too. :)

However, a definitely-not-exhaustive list of stuff, off the top of my head:

Roughly what sort of speed and damage levels? (see Nate's post for a good example of these)

What secondary effects would either a specific attack or a set in general be associated with?

Are there unusual mechanics that would be part of the 'schtick' of the set? (canonical examples from CoX would be Dual Blades combo setup, Street Justice stacking behavior, or Titan Weapons momentum stuff)

And so on (there are relevant defensive equivalents in several cases, of course).

We'll try to give out more as we can pin some of it down, but a bunch of this is basically still in the "working it out ourselves" stages, because there are both a lot of nifty bits and a lot of things that maybe didn't work so well, just in the ancestral examples, and a whole bunch of additional stuff to look at on top of that. And some of it is up in the air because we're still sifting through how to give as much of "the game they want to play" to as many people as we can, without just losing our way in a maze of twisty mechanics, all subtly but not meaningfully different. Or being eaten by a grue...

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
A simple thought to drop in the cauldron:
Visual decoupling means that quite a few of these possibilities are (or at least could be) simply another form of ranged attack in a normal set. Damage done at range which happens to be of a type a fist might do? Okay, next question, is that fist on fire? Is it "slicing air" in an anime style attack? Etc.

In retrospect, some of that was about as clear as mud. So let me try again:
Cases 1 and 2 of the original, if discarding the complex mechanics questions of "does X actually *move*" (in a gameplay-affecting way) are basically both just visual variations of any other ranged line-of-sight / "beam" (as opposed to "projectile") attack. They don't happen to have any animation of the middle section, just of the attack happening and of the impact animation.
The fact that there may happen to be an entire body involved in the animation is, for the most part, not actually likely to be a big issue -- if anything it is probably simpler than managing to correctly 'aim' a normal melee attack.

Is anyone else giggling insanely at the mental image of a hero that punches so hard it causes small tears in spacetime that happen to make said punches connect with an enemy? Arm extends, vanishes into thin air at the elbow, fist and forearm appear in midair near target and punch. Commence laughter. Easy problem would be a heavy single target focus in the set with maybe one of two AoE attacks performed by dropping a grenade instead of just punching.
Very effective and likely doable.

Ding ding ding.

Quite doable. The excuse for a fast set to use it would be moving so *fast* that it warps space, of course. And then, for those that prefer a slightly adjusted timing and a sillier look, there's always the Inspector Gadget spring-arm approach...

Is anyone else giggling insanely at the mental image of a hero that punches so hard it causes small tears in spacetime that happen to make said punches connect with an enemy? Arm extends, vanishes into thin air at the elbow, fist and forearm appear in midair near target and punch. Commence laughter. Easy problem would be a heavy single target focus in the set with maybe one of two AoE attacks performed by dropping a grenade instead of just punching.

That's pretty much exactly what I was visualizing with the Wormhole Melee stuff many posts ago in this thread. With the "wormhole" barely bigger than your fist. So it looks like you punch, your fist disappears here and appears over there by the target, and WHAM! Tech-wise, the engine is doing the exact same thing Portal does all over the place.

Voldine wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
A simple thought to drop in the cauldron:
Visual decoupling means that quite a few of these possibilities are (or at least could be) simply another form of ranged attack in a normal set. Damage done at range which happens to be of a type a fist might do? Okay, next question, is that fist on fire? Is it "slicing air" in an anime style attack? Etc.

In retrospect, some of that was about as clear as mud. So let me try again:
Cases 1 and 2 of the original, if discarding the complex mechanics questions of "does X actually *move*" (in a gameplay-affecting way) are basically both just visual variations of any other ranged line-of-sight / "beam" (as opposed to "projectile") attack. They don't happen to have any animation of the middle section, just of the attack happening and of the impact animation.
The fact that there may happen to be an entire body involved in the animation is, for the most part, not actually likely to be a big issue -- if anything it is probably simpler than managing to correctly 'aim' a normal melee attack.

Is anyone else giggling insanely at the mental image of a hero that punches so hard it causes small tears in spacetime that happen to make said punches connect with an enemy? Arm extends, vanishes into thin air at the elbow, fist and forearm appear in midair near target and punch. Commence laughter. Easy problem would be a heavy single target focus in the set with maybe one of two AoE attacks performed by dropping a grenade instead of just punching.
Very effective and likely doable.

Ding ding ding.
Quite doable. The excuse for a fast set to use it would be moving so *fast* that it warps space, of course. And then, for those that prefer a slightly adjusted timing and a sillier look, there's always the Inspector Gadget spring-arm approach...

The thing is, this concept is easily applied in multiple different animations. Call the base a ranged st damage set with a theme of melee combat via extending limbs so the combat is done at range. Immediately, multiple animation applications come to mind.

Wormhole Melee
Rubbery Melee (Mr. Fantastic-style limb bending and stretching)
Rocket Punch (Hands visibly disconnect and trail flame and smoke effects, then return)
Telekinetic Brawling (Fists made of energy hit your target instead of part of you moving to hit the target)
Telescoping Limbs (Similar to Rubbery in looks but with minimum bending to look more mechanical like a more solid Inspector Gadget style and less comedic)

That's literally just off the top of my head. All of them differ only in animation and are mechanically the exact same powers.

Wormhole Melee
Rubbery Melee (Mr. Fantastic-style limb bending and stretching)
Rocket Punch (Hands visibly disconnect and trail flame and smoke effects, then return)
Telekinetic Brawling (Fists made of energy hit your target instead of part of you moving to hit the target)
Telescoping Limbs (Similar to Rubbery in looks but with minimum bending to look more mechanical like a more solid Inspector Gadget style and less comedic)

IMHO you have two groups there: Wormhole and Telekinetic in one, and the rest in the other. The difference is that WH and TK are much faster animations and don't need line of sight.

Now if we just needed to develop powers, we'd be done. But powers come in sets, and that's where the real mix-and-match happens.

Quite doable. The excuse for a fast set to use it would be moving so *fast* that it warps space, of course. And then, for those that prefer a slightly adjusted timing and a sillier look, there's always the Inspector Gadget spring-arm approach...

One difference between having a hand "reach out and touch someone", vs a projectile or a blast, is that your hand can also manipulate things. I would expect there would be folks who would wonder why they couldn't use the wormhole to click glowies or whatever at range. Would there be a way to balance it to let them make that happen (like requiring them to burn another power choice for that), or would it come down to "gah... we let you punch at range. Shut up about the clicking, already"

—

Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"

One difference between having a hand "reach out and touch someone", vs a projectile or a blast, is that your hand can also manipulate things. I would expect there would be folks who would wonder why they couldn't use the wormhole to click glowies or whatever at range. Would there be a way to balance it to let them make that happen (like requiring them to burn another power choice for that), or would it come down to "gah... we let you punch at range. Shut up about the clicking, already"

Well, then the devs would have to flag the glowies you could do that with (e.g. "grab screwdriver off a table") vs. the ones you couldn't (e.g. "hack into computer system").

Manipulation Of Objects At Range winds up being something very much akin to Stretching (ala Reed Richards of Fantastic 4) as it is defined in the Champions pen and paper version. Whether that is actually done by literal stretching (including the Inspector Gadget telescoping limbs example) or done via wormholes that "skip" all the space between Here and There, the results would be substantially similar ... with the caveat that the wormhole method could ignore Line of Sight limitations.

Still, just because you can "punch" someone in the face through a "quicky" wormhole, that doesn't then mean you can keep the wormhole open long enough to do "clickety-click" work from the opposite side of the room over an extended period of time. Being able to *manipulate* objects (such as Click The Glowie actions) would have to work on some kind of Toggle basis, rather than Click Power basis ... because I think we can all agree, that while Percussive Maintenance has its uses, PUNCHING a keyboard with your fist to smash it rarely works at a password entry method with a high rate of success when you need to type carefully and precisely (or whatever).

—

Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

Excellent thread Michiel, and excellent comments throughout. I would definitely be in favor of this powerset and agree that we need to come up with ideas first and foremost and then figure out how to fit it into the game mechanics and how to balance it. Voldine and GhostHack hit it on the head:

"Wormhole Melee
Rubbery Melee (Mr. Fantastic-style limb bending and stretching)
Rocket Punch (Hands visibly disconnect and trail flame and smoke effects, then return)
Telekinetic Brawling (Fists made of energy hit your target instead of part of you moving to hit the target)
Telescoping Limbs (Similar to Rubbery in looks but with minimum bending to look more mechanical like a more solid Inspector Gadget style and less comedic)

That's literally just off the top of my head. All of them differ only in animation and are mechanically the exact same powers."

These are all the same power, just different animations. Once we know the "skeleton" of how the mechanics work, we the players, will come up with a million and one ideas on how to fit in differerent concepts.

And in regards to balancing the powers, it's a superhero game. The powers work the way the Devs want it to work. As long as it's fun, i'll play it. The Assault Rifle example someone upthread gave is perfect. It's a gun with unlimited ammo. Not once, did I see my character pulling a rolling backpack full of ammunition. Not once did my character call timeout mid-mish because he was running the mission solo set for a group of eight and he ran out of ammunition because, "Oops, I didn't bring enough ammo for all these extra baddies. Stay here while I reload, k?" Suspension of disbelief. It works wonders. On the flip side, I'm sure someone at some point Roleplayed that same scenario and literally walked out of the mission to reload.

The Assault Rifle example someone upthread gave is perfect. It's a gun with unlimited ammo. Not once, did I see my character pulling a rolling backpack full of ammunition.

I often joked about my Huntsman build (which was on a dual build with a Crab Soldier setup, so I always had the backpack legs) that my Huntsman ... Leggs (because nothing beats a great set of...) ... would sometimes be left standing ankle deep in brass after doing Stand And Deliver for really long periods of time.

All of this discussion regarding inefficiency and energy-usage aside, *teleport* *Boot-to-the-Head* *teleport* is a lot more viscerally Satisfying than teleporting a force/shockwave that hits the enemy. 'Rail-gunning' a brick though a wormhole, or 'wormhole-punching' a target in the jaw is a pretty cool thing for cinematic 'oomph', but it's less likely to work in the fast-paced world of MMO combat.

If you've got a wormhole that goes to the vicinity of an enemy's face, toss a stink-bomb (or grenade) through the portal, wait for the 'earth-shattering kaBoom', and go vacuum up the pieces.

All of this discussion regarding inefficiency and energy-usage aside, *teleport* *Boot-to-the-Head* *teleport* is a lot more viscerally Satisfying than teleporting a force/shockwave that hits the enemy.

That's my thought. Seeing your character zipping about hitting things and even getting hit back would be awesome. All the other things are cool too, but not in the same way. Although I could see the teleport set and wormhole set being very complimentary and would be a fun build.

I recall having a build on my Electric/Ice blaster named Dusck where I had Teleport as my travel power and had obtained "Whirlwind" from another power set.I would start off with Whirlwind then teleport into a mob, lay down a sheet of ice then do a Short Circuit . Good fun that was but I always wanted something more like you are suggesting. I always thought of a power where the description is teleport-hit combo much like you have described. The good ol days of CoH.